Almost a musical

I’m on a bit of a Disney kick at the moment, so you’ll either have to ride it out with me or come back later when I’ll be obsessing over something else.

I’ve been trying to work out exactly what it was about Frozen that left me feeling a little flat.  I mean, apart from the panic about an “eternal winter” that didn’t even last a whole afternoon before people were forming possies.

I think it was because it disappointed me as a musical.  It started of with so much promise:  An ensemble piece, the solos, the duet… It looked like it was shaping up to be a worthy companion to Beauty and the Beast.

But then it dropped the ball, musically speaking.  I couldn’t help but feel it was missing a few key numbers.  Where was Elsa’s song about wishing she could love and be loved?  Where was Kristoff’s song about “man this girl is annoying, but she kind of grows on you”?  Where was a nice big number (either a solo, duet on ensemble) about how real love can make a real difference (if not earlier in the piece, it totally should have been in that part where Anna works out what an act of love is all about and Elsa realises how to thaw the kingdom).

Yeah, the “fixer-upper” song was kind of that… only it really, really wasn’t.

What was with that waste of an ensemble?  We had the ice song at the beginning (good start), then the trolls’ number just past the half-way mark, but what about a nice, juicy “hey, it’s beginning to snow!” from the townsfolk at the start of the *cough* eternal winter and a nice big riff on the “do you want to build a snowman” theme at the end?

Can you imagine what the film would have been like if it had ended with the entire cast and ensemble singing “come out and play?”

Have you ever seen the stage version of Beauty and the Beast?  Unlike other adaptations of movies to stage musicals, nothing much needed to be altered to take that film from the screen to the stage.  The original animated film was just a well crafted musical and, because of that, it translated really well from one medium to another.

You wouldn’t be able to do that with Frozen – or with Tangled for that matter.  As much as I loved Tangled, it was also pretty undernourished as a musical.

Quite frankly, I think Pocahontas was a better musical than any of the more recent Disney films.  That’s not meant to imply that I think poorly about Pocahontas and am comparing the more recent stuff with something unfavourable.  I loved Pocahontas so much I actually bought the sound track, and still occasionally burst out with “I look once more – just around the river bend – beyond the shore…”

But that movie is almost 20 years old.  Name one Disney animation from the past two decades that could hold a candle, musically speaking to Pocahontas, let along be in the same league as Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King?

I think Frozen could have done it.  It showed promise.  And then it didn’t live up to that promise, which is such a bummer.

I know it sounds like I hated that film, but I was really just disappointed by it.  It had moments of being almost great, but it was never actually as great as it could have been.

Siin me oleme (Here We Are)

Siin me oleme

I watched the weirdest movie I have ever seen last week.

It was an Estonian film from the late 70's about a bunch of crazy city folk who turn up at a farm full of crazy country folk and then do nothing at all, really.

It was basically a bunch of sight-gags stretched out into sketches and then stitched together into a plot.

And it made no sense at all.

Things would happen, and there was no reason for them to happen.  Occasionally, this would lead to other weird things happening, but mostly the new weird things were somewhat independant of the old weird things.

Plot lines suddenly disappeared as if they never existed.  New storylines would appear from nowhere.  I found myself constantly gesticulating at the TV saying "What are you doing?  Why are you doing that?  Who are you people?"

There were characters who had no back story.  Of the three city folk who turned up, one was never explained.  She was just in the car with the others, and apparently brought along specifically to be a gorgeous red-head (in a wig).  Who was she?  Was she a daughter?  A sister?  A friend?

Why did she flounce around and flirt shamelessly for the first half of the film, and then suddenly turn into a sharp-witted shrew in the second half?

Where did all the other people on the farm come from whenever an audience was needed for the fat city woman to do something ridiculous?  Where did they all go in the meantime?

At one point I wasn't sure if the farmer's wife was talking to the cow she was milking or the fat city woman.  Then again, the lipsyncing was so bad I wasn't sure who was talking half the time.

And then there were the musical numbers.  They came out of nowhere, lasted for approximately two verses, and then disappeared.  And they weren't like musical numbers you get in normal musicals - where the song expresses part of what's going on in the character's life at that point.  It was more like the characters were just bursting into song because they had a tune in their head at that point in time, and decided to sing it out loud (with magical musical accompaniment).

Much like an average day in office for me, but still a bit weird for a movie.

The whole thing was a bit crazy-pants, to be honest.  Yet strangely compelling.  Nothing much was happening at all, but I had to keep watching to see what would happen next.